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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I was never cool

-- by joseph musso jr. --

about himself he write, "Joseph Musso lives in New Jersey, a place where the ocean meets the human heart. I Was Never Cool is his second book."

A combo of John Fante and Franz Kafka, the terse staccato rhythms of the typewriter slams, "Rocky" in a coffeehouse, a bull in a china shop, Musso writes sparsely and elgantly of growing up and not growing up, of sexual awakening, and of battlefields in neighorhoods, where the fathers join the kids' fights...abandoned fetuses in abandoned houses, some of which is not pretty, yes, Joe was never cool. Maybe not cool, but certainly smart and direct as your heart beat. Joe is about to summarize a generation of Americans growing after the Vietnam debacle, a generation that was never cool, but never dumb either...

Praised by Jack Foley and George Sidney alike, a beat and an academic, respecitively, Joe is a writer to expect more from, as he explores the paradoxes of sex and life with his wry, understated, sardonic, style, yet with playfulness of language of a poet...